india 09: through fresh eyes cities in literature

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Indian writers have long been held in high esteem in international literature. V.S. Naipaul, Amartya Sen, Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy, to name but a few, have done for Indian writing what Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende did for the Latin American literary boom. So it's about time that the contribution of the world's second most populous country to the world of books was celebrated.

Of the fifty Indian writers who've come to London as ambassadors for Indian literature at this year's London Book Fair, three distinguished men of words (and one Brit) took part in a panel discussion titled "Cities in Literature", part of the British Council-sponsored India 09: Through Fresh Eyes programme. Writers including Suketu Metha (pictured above), author of the acclaimed Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found discussed what is it about cities that inspire so much writing.

Each author spoke about their own experiences of city life and how it influenced their writing (novellist Shankar, who's penned 80 books in Bengali, has set all his books in Calcutta) and then read a passage from their chosen work. Austin Williams, the aforementioned lone Brit on the panel, spoke about London while Namdeo Dhasal's publisher, who attended in place of his awol client, read about the dark side of 70s Mumbai from Dhasal's radical collection of powerful poetry.

But it was Sukhetu Metha's shimmering account of contemporary Bombay life, a city of 21 million people, that really caught my imagination. Part reportage, part memoir, Metha's gift for capturing the spirit of the city was compelling to listen to and, I was told, even more fascinating to read. "The Londoners of the future are being born in Bombay today", he said, speaking of the relationship between global cities in the 21st century.

After hearing the panellists speak so eloquently and passionately about their cities and their work, I immediately went out and bought Metha's Maximum City (five years after everyone else it seems!) and read up on Namdeo Dhasal and Shankar. When I'm done with Maximum City, which is living up to the hype as an absolute page turner, I'll definitely go in search of other Indian writers and their words. There are worse ways to spend a Saturday afternoon than in the company of literary giants.

Cities In Literature took place at the British Library on Saturday, 18 April.